Over Optimization Is A Thing

Hey,

Over the next few days, I'm going to share with you some of the biggest mistakes I see authors making with their Amazon Ads.

In yesterday's email, I mentioned that my new course, Jumpstart Amazon Ads launched, and one of the topics I cover inside Jumpstart is optimization.

In particular, optimizing your Amazon Ads in under 30 minutes per week; it doesn't need to be any more complicated or time-consuming than that, unless you are advertising a huge number of books/series.

However, as I talk about a lot, focusing on the 80/20 is far better than spreading yourself too thin.

So, rather than advertising every single book and/or every single series, analyze your data and find the 20% of books/series that are generating 80% of your royalties and focus on those.

Coming back to optimization...

When you see a poor performing campaign, it can be oh so tempting to "optimize it". Resist the temptation!

There is such a thing as over-optimization, where you are optimizing too much.

The Amazon Algorithm takes time to understand what your book is all about, where to place your Ads to find the readers most likely to buy/borrow your book and how relevant it is to the Keywords or ASINs you are targeting.

Over time though, campaigns mature as Amazon learns more about your books, your conversion rates for different targets, the placements your Ads convert the highest, which targets don't work for your books, etc.

Amazon Ads are like a fine wine or a good cheese; they get better with age!

If you are tinkering with your Ads every day, particularly in the first 2 weeks of a new campaign, you are going to be basing your decisions on incomplete data for a start, but also, you're not giving the Amazon Algorithm enough time and space to optimize the campaign for you.

If you are sending plenty of relevant traffic to your books but are seeing seeing little to no conversions, then yes, there is clearly something off with your book itself, such as the reviews/ratings, the description, etc.

As I mentioned a few days ago in The Morning ACOS, Amazon Ads are just there to drive traffic. Your book sells your book.

I recommend you let any new campaigns run for at least 2 weeks to begin with, completely untouched - no optimization!

After those initial 2 weeks, then plan on one weekly 30-60 minute optimization session, along with a 5-10 minute daily check-in on the high level stats of the campaigns.

As the old saying goes, "too many cooks spoil the broth" - and too much tweaking of your Amazon Ads spoils the performance.

So, optimize, yes, but don't overdo it.

To Your Success
- Matt